LegiStorm has now released all Personal Financial Disclosures filed by Senate aides in 2008. The disclosures include the annual reports filed by staffers by the May 15 deadline, as well as letters granting extensions to those staffers who asked for more time to file.
Only certain staffers are required to file disclosures. Generally, those required to file are the highest-paid staffers, who also tend to be the most senior ones who crafting legislation and policy. The disclosures serve as one tool to highlight any possible conflicts of interest or other financial issues involving these key legislative employees.
We have left out a handful of staffers who have filed but who are not listed in our current salary database, such as employees of special commissions. We will be adding them soon.
We have also discovered a bug whereby the staffers are not always listed on the proper senator's page. For example, http://www.legistorm.com/pfd_office/member/Sen_Jim_Webb/819.html shows no staffers filing reports but if you search our site for Legislative Director Michael Sozan, as an example, you do find that Sozan has filed a report here. We hope to fix that bug tomorrow but in the meantime, you should be able to find the financial disclosures by staffer name.
LegiStorm's release of the Senate staffer PFDs comes after we made the disclosures of every Member of Congress available online the same day they were released. Now we are moving on to the larger number of House staffers and we plan to have all of those available within a few days. Our rate is limited mostly by the slow speed of the printers in the House Legislative Resources Center. However, we will post the House financial disclosures as we get them in.
LegiStorm is the only site that has staffers' financial disclosures available online for the public to peruse. As we've said before, we feel these disclosures are vital sources of information. As you look through the disclosures, please leave a comment and let us know if you see anything of interest.
